Illumination: Central Bus Terminal / pfarré lighting design

The lighting for the Central Bus Terminal in Munich by pfarré lighting design aims at giving the appearance of a building floating on a cushion of cold white light. As a result, warm light is used in the upper floors and in the exterior space while a softly shimmering façade evokes a powerfully glowing orange. More images and their description after the break.

Floodlights integrated within the nine-meter high light masts subtly illuminate the 165 meter long façade of aluminum tubes. The banner on the retail, restaurant and café level is brilliant orange, and has advertising for all the companies in the building. The banner is evenly illuminated by floodlights with glare reduction. The bus terminal level is illuminated by 200 cold-white downlights and is transformed into a large, highly contrasted area covering nearly 9,000 square meters after nightfall.

The shopping level has indirect ceiling lighting from recessed light fields. This low-cost system was used throughout the mezzanine level mall area. Additional downlights give special emphasis to entryways, elevators and intersections. By using highly efficient glare-reducing lighting technology it was possible to deliver a project with exceptionally low energy balance sheet figures: the interior achieves an average value of 4.3 W/m2 and the exterior 0.5 W/m2.